Meeting on the Bridge: Healing the Chasm Between Humans and Nature

Tracey Besmark

I know two big, beautiful dogs
who I pass on my way to and from my travels into the world. But my
heart breaks when I drive by. They are chained up, and in the year
that I have gone this way, I have never once seen them off their leashes
or being exercised or patted. Yes, they have dog houses and water
and food, but they are lacking the freedom to be dogs and lacking a
basic need of all living creatures: warmth and love.

Sometimes,
as I drive by, I burst into tears of anger and compassion and feel
myself chained, too. What is being done is legal, and there is nothing
I can do. I almost cant bear the pain. So, in my efforts to
not feel anger toward the owner, who ignores even my salutary wave,
and to see how I could spiritually alleviate their pain, I undertook
a shamanic journey to seek answers.

As a practitioner of core shamanism,
when I need sacred guidance, I go on a journey. When one
journeys, she alters her consciousness by listening to monotonous drumming
and connects with spiritual guidance in the forms of power animals
or teachers. Beautiful answers, healing information, and creative
ideas are often the result, and while the journey may be allegorical
or metaphorical, I have found that it is always profound and revealing.

As I set out on my journey, I held my intention in my heart What
can I do to help those dogs?

I reached my teacher and he
said, My dear, do you want to see the childhood of the man who
owns them? Surprised, but trusting as always in his wisdom,
I said, Yes. Horrified, I watched the man as a boy being
thrown around a room by his burly father; I watched him slapped, pushed,
yelled at and humiliated into a small dark corner of his own soul.

I felt a new understanding of and compassion for him realizing
that in his treatment of the dogs, he was only mirroring his own fragmentation.
I thought: we are all so wounded, no wonder we wound the creatures
with whom we share this planet. I asked my teacher, Why are humans
and nature so separate? Why have we humans done such terrible things
to the earthand consequentlyourselves?

In response,
my teacher took me back in time to show me where the original fissure
occurredto a very primal state of human existence where people
gathered and hunted. In living close to the earth, they knew they
were a part of the earth, not removed from it.

Then I
saw a bolt of lightning come from the sky and strike a small child
dead. The distraught parents held their dying child and shook their
fists at the sky. Next, I saw a fire consume a small band of people
who were trapped in a small dwelling while their panicked fellows vainly
attempted to save them. Last, I saw earthquakes and tidal waves wipe
out human lives instantaneously.

In the pain and anger of loss,
these people turned their confusion on nature and began to slowly
get back at herto dominate, to subjugate. I said
to my teacher, What can I do to help?

He said almost
matter-of-factly, You need to do a soul retrieval for the human
race. In disbelief, I thought, Oh, is that all? knowing
that what he was asking would be painful and intensely challenging.
But, because I love the universe so, and because I completely trust
my spirit teacher, I knew that I must do what he was asking. Soul
retrieval is a healing technique whereby the shaman journeys for another
with the intention of bringing back lost soul pieces to restore wholeness.

Thus, we began our descent. We spiraled into the earth, deeper than
I had ever journeyed beforeto the earths core. We arrived
and entered a swirling chamber fiery and acidic. In a prison
cell, I saw the Soul of Humanity, who appeared as a tar-like, human-like
being, both sad and confused, holding the bars of its cage. Outside
the cage, I had to duck to avoid being bombarded by little gargoyle-like
demons.

My teacher said, There is much you must do here.
First, you must understand that those demons are all split-off
pieces of the human race. There is much soul loss here, much confusion.
You must heal these pieces with compassion.

Knowing what
to do, I called on divine love to come into meand it did, as
a shaft of white, healing light, through my head, down into my heart,
and into my outstretched hands. Before long, I was sending this compassion
to all the demons, and they changed into child-like beings, happy to
be drenched in light.

I gathered them all together and took them
to the Soul of Humanity and blew them, one by one, into that spirit
body. After I had finished, the Soul of Humanity had also changed.
Now, what appeared was a half-man, half-woman, aglow and smiling.
And the cage bars fell away. I felt such relief, and my teacher instructed
me to take Humanity to the realm of the Sun, who in this journey was
indeed God. I joyfully flew with Humanity and my teacher to the Sun,
who stood as large as a house before us. The Sun was pleased, and
I sighed with relief, thinking my work was complete.

But my teacher
turned to me and said, Now, you must retrieve the Soul of Nature,
as well.

Exhausted and frightened, I said, Can I
come back tomorrow and do that?

But he looked at me with
seriousness and said, You cannot do half of a job; you asked
how you could help, and this is the way. I knew he was right;
if I really was committed to being an instrument of spirit, I must
do what was asked of me. My years of journeywork had also taught me
that I am never given more than I can handle.

Taking a deep breath,
I said, Okay. Lets go. We traveled to the ocean
and dove deeply. Down and down we went; as we dropped, it grew darker,
thicker. I felt fear rise up in me as I followed, knowing we were
getting close to our destination: the broken Soul of Nature.

At last we reached the bottom of the ocean; in front of us was a swirling,
vertical vortex pulling us inside itself. As I felt myself sucked
inside, my teacher said: This is the pain of the earth. You
are entering the place where the shattered, disembodied soul pieces
of every cut tree, every slaughtered animal, every poisoned river and
suffocated fish have gone. Go with courage.

I found myself
inside a deafening, tormented scream. I felt, not heard, a million
voices screaming in me, through me, and I became the scream.
Forgetting who I was, or why I was there, or how to get back out,
I became that horrific pain. If my teacher had not pulled me
out, I may never have broken free. Shaken, I asked, How do I
help this?

Call on the Creator, he said. Call
on love. So, together, he and I floated there, outside this
swirling mass of millions of natures lost soul parts, and we
called on the love of the divine, which again came into our heads,
into our hearts and powerfully poured from our hands in shafts illuminating
the vortex. Soon the vortex slowed in its spinning and became dreamy,
backlit clouds suspended in the water.

Through tears of gratitude,
I watched as a beautiful woman, dressed entirely in green, her clothes
made of grasses, reeds, and leaves, came toward us from the other direction,
with opened hands.

I am the Soul of Nature, she announced
weakly. But I am depleted and very sad. I came because I knew you
would help me.

Intuitively, I went to the cloudy vortex and
held out my hand. I invited the now-calm lost pieces of nature to
come to me so I could return them to their true home, inside the green
goddess, the Soul of Nature. They came in a chain, into my right hand,
through my heart, and out my left hand which I had placed on the chest
of the Lady. I held the space until my teacher said, It is done.

The Soul of Nature, my teacher, and I journeyed to the Sun where the
Soul of Humanity still waited. The Sun smiled, nodded down at us,
and said to the two characters, Now you are both here; this is
good. For too long, you have been separated by lack of kindness and
blame and disrespect. It is time this game of pain ceased. It is
time you began to forgive.

At that, I expected Nature and
Humanity to rush toward each other and embrace warmly, ready for reconciliation.
But instead they eyed each other warily, fearfully, with trepidation.
It occurred to me that it would take much time to mend this friendship;
the lost trust would take a long time to be regained.

The Sun
knew this and simply held them there in the gaze of his shining rays.
And he built a great bridge, there in the heavens between Nature and
Humanity, and said, Humanity, you alone are not responsible for
walking all the way to Natures side. Nature, you alone are not
responsible for walking all the way to Humanitys side. You must
meet in the middle. You must come togetherthats the only
cure for the pain.

Slowly, they walked onto the bridge from
either side, little steps, each looking longingly back at the where
they had come from, both unsure. But at last, they came to stand before
each other, there in the face of the Sun. With much caution, each
put out a hand to the other. Their hands finally came together in a
tentative grasp.

There in the sun, the vision was glorious: the
earth goddess with shining eyes in her flowing gowns of green and the
Blakean half-man, half-woman, hair tousled and face gentle there in
the golden glow of Gods light clasping hands, and beginning.
Beginnings are all there are, it seems, and I was witnessing a spectacular
one.

My teacher said, This work is now complete. This is
the first step in healing the gap between Humanity and Nature. Much
more must be done, but what has happened today is of great importance.
Watch for the signs around you that will tell you of the impact of
this day. We then returned to our special place, and I came
back into my body.

I was exhausted but uplifted. The clock told
me my journey had lasted over an hour (most journeys are 15-20 minutes),
and I was wiped out the rest of the day but filled with blissful gratitude.

This journey has changed much for me, and to honor it, I am telling
this story. The time is here, now. Its time to forgive
each other, forgive the earth, forgive the Creator, and learn to be
compassionate towards everything that exists. So, I ask, how can you
meet nature on the bridge? What can you do to help manifest the vision
of us all living in a world where we no longer imprison ourselves or
the earth, where we completely bare our genuine light and take each
other into the full, honest embrace of true lovers? When you answer
those questions for yourself, please dont keep them to yourself.
Instead, make them manifest; bring them forth. Make them part of
your lifes work; make them your unique gift to the universe.
. .

The day after I took this journey, I drove past the dogs.
The owner was in the yard with a wheelbarrow, and my heart swelled
with compassion for the chained dogs and also for him. Just then,
he looked up, our eyes met, and he lifted his hand in a friendly wave.
That was the first time he had ever made this gesture. With tears
forming in my eyes, I waved back.

Tracey Besmark has been
practicing core shamanism for nine years. She is a graduate of the
Foundation for Shamanic Studies (under the direction of Michael
Harner) Three-Year Program in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing.
Together with her husband, Emery Vaillant, also a shamanic practitioner,
she is co-creator of Spirit Hollow, a center for shamanism and spiritual
ecology in Shaftsbury, Vermont where they live and conduct private
healing sessions, trainings, vision quests, sweat lodges, and seasonal
ceremonies. Tracey is interested in helping to heal the gap between
humans and nature and in using sacred song to help all beings shine
their light.